Thursday, August 4, 2011

17-Year-Old Pennsylvania Girl Dead

The friends were drinking malt liquor, playing cards and listening to music, Mr. Chaney later told Clairton police, and at some point Mr. Chaney pulled out a semiautomatic handgun he had hidden on a shelf in the garage.

Mr. Chaney told police he removed the handgun's clip, pulled back the slide to make sure there were no rounds inside, then passed the gun to one of the other young men. He looked at the gun for a few minutes, then passed it to Karrie, according to a criminal complaint against Mr. Chaney, who stated that "we were passing it around and playing with the gun and looking at it."

Karrie gave the gun back to Mr. Chaney, who inserted the clip back into the gun and "cocked" the slide to the rear, the complaint states.

"He said the next thing he knows the gun went off, striking the victim in the right side of the chest."

These kids grow up with guns. They know more about guns than most. Yet, this is what happens. Some folks say what's missing is traing and education, but I honestly don't see it. All the gun tragedy these kids have been exposed to in their short lives did not sufficiently curtail their curiosity and desire to "play with the gun." Those impulses in many teenagers are too strong to be overcome by the lessons of older brothers in jail or by the Eddie Eagle training which insists on not playing with guns.

The only hope for kids like these is a comprehensive, national system of gun control legislation. Only this will make guns unavailable to young people who don't have the good sense to responsibly handle guns.

Overwhelmingly, no one finds abstinence only useful. It is not even appropriate to call it education since it is institutionalized ignorance that deprives students of correct information, and instead fails to answer questions, intentionally provides medically inaccurate information about sexually transmitted disease, contraception, pregnancy and human sexuality / sexual orientation. It promotes a narrow religious-specific view of sex and sexuality that should never ever ever be funded by tax dollars in respect to the 1st amendment freedom of religion (or from it). And overwhelmingly IT DOESN'T WORK. It does not succeed in abstinence - which I disagree is a desirable goal for human beings - and it sure as hell doesn't promote safe sex.

Nations which DO teach comprehensive informative sex ed, the stuff we SHOULD teach here but do not, have DRAMATICALLY lower levels of unintended pregnancies, and STDs. The promotion of condom use in those countries, along with promoting waiting to have sex until one is in the right loving relationship - not necessarily marriage - is far better, far more reality based, and far far more successful in every public health and humanly sane metric (as contrasted with ideology-driven irrationality) INCLUDING LONG TERM SUCCESSFUL RELATIONSHIPS, greater reported happiness, and fewer sexual partners over the period of individuals' lives.

Sorry TenBud, but you are in an ill-informed little world of your own.

There is a correlation between purity pledgers and abstinence only-ers.

12/29/2008 05:48 PM

Study: Purity Rings Don't Work A new study has found that virginity pledges don't work. The teens who take them are just as likely to have sex, are less likely to practice safe sex, and are more likely to lie about it later.

The study found that virginity pledgers have sex at similar ages to those who don't take a pledge. Their sexual practices which involve anal, vaginal, and oral sex are similar to non-pledging teens. They are just as likely to have an STD.

The study also included a follow up five years later and discovered that pledgers were 10% less likely to use condoms or other forms of birth control. They also found that 80% of pledgers lied and claimed never to have taken a pledge.

-------------------- and from earlier:

The abstinence-only approach to sex educationis not supported by the extensive body of scientificresearch on what works to protect youngpeople from HIV/AIDS, sexually transmitted infections(STIs), and unplanned pregnancy. Anassessment of the peer-reviewed, publishedresearch reveals no evidence that abstinenceonlyprograms delay sexual initiation or reduceSTIs or pregnancy. By contrast, credible researchclearly demonstrates that some comprehensivesex education, or “abstinence-plus,”programs can achieve positive behavioralchanges among young people and reduce STIs,and that these programs do not encourageyoung people to initiate sexual activity earlier orhave more sexual partners.The growing prominence of the abstinence-onlyapproach will likely have serious unintendedconsequences by denying young people accessto the information they need to protect themselves.And abstinence-only programs risk alienatingthe young people at highest risk ofnegative health outcomes by promoting a “onesize fits all” vision of adolescence that matchesthe true experiences of only a minority of youth.Unprotected sexual activity among young peoplecan have severe personal, social and financialcosts. Unprotected sex among youth results innearly four million STIs each year, many withserious long term consequences. The great majorityof the 10,000 annual new HIV infectionsamong people under 22 occurs through sexualactivity. The United States still has the highestrates of STIs and teen pregnancy of any industrializednation.http://ari.ucsf.edu/science/reports/abstinence.pdf____________________________

Unfortunately there is a really tragic correlation between the anti-sex abstinence only crowd, and the gun-loon 2nd Amendment we-should-all-be-armed demographic that appears to be pro-guns and potential gun violence, while being equally anti-sex / anti-choice.

Not broadly supported, either position; but that doesn't stop the right wing nuts from trying to force their tragic outcome views on the rest of us. @hile giving lip service to freedom, which is exactly what they deny people.

1. How secure is it to have a loaded gun on a shelf in the garage instead of in a gun safe?

2. How reliable is behavior, including both perceptive clarity and physical coordination, after consumption of a minimal quantity of strong alcohol?

3. How responsible is it be passing around a gun and playing with it, as some kind of toy? And what does this report inadvertantly tell us about these people's attitudes towards firarms?

It doesn't indicate to me any respect whatsoever for firearms as weapons. THESE are precisely the people who should NOT have guns, because they are dangerous to themselves and others, far more dangerous than any rare self-defense justification.

When Karrie, whose three older brothers are in jail, wasn't at school or working at McDonald's, she was nearly always at home with her mother, said Karrie's godsister, Shantelle Moody, 18, of Clairton. Karrie studied hard and planned to go to college next fall.

The friends were drinking malt liquor, playing cards and listening to music, Mr. Chaney later told Clairton police, and at some point Mr. Chaney pulled out a semiautomatic handgun he had hidden on a shelf in the garage.

Police went to the scene at 1:10 a.m. and Karrie was taken to Jefferson Regional Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead. The gun was not recovered at the scene, and anyone with information about it is asked to call the Allegheny County homicide unit.

His father, Greg Chaney, said he and the young man's mother have talked to him for years about staying away from guns and out of trouble. But after his son turned 18 (can we say federally disallowed gun ownership), he said, he thought he was automatically an adult and began skipping school. He finally dropped out of Clairton High School this spring, just a few months short of graduation.

Maybe she should have been home studying/reading or sleeping at 1:10AM rather than hanging out with the local brain trust, underage drinking/partying.

I think we ar going to have a long wait for any substantiation that abstinence only is effective.

The numbers are overwhelmingly against it. TennBudd hit on one of the topics I've researched pretty thoroughly for things I've written in the past, on Penigma.

There is absolutely no excuse for teaching medically inaccurate information to children, calling it education when it is anything but that, and then hoping that ignorance will prevent STDs and pregnancy, or any of the other problems that come from NOT knowing the facts of the birds and the bees.

There were a very few contrived / rigged studies that were used to try to support TennBudds claims. They did not do well in peer review, were pretty well debunked.

None of them explain why abstinence only sex ed consistently produces the same problems, over and over; while introducing accurate, complete, age appropriate information does not - and why when it replaces abstinence only, all the numbers improve to similar ones in other countries that are better.

THAT pretty much nails down the cause and effect correlation for abstinence only not working.

It doesn't help to have drunk, naked bed-hopping lunatics like Christine O'Donnell plugging the cause. If there was ever a poster child for a social cause that is a train wreck of the narrative, she is it.